Christians processed Islam by slotting it into pre-existing heresy and Antichrist frameworks.

Evidence

If God’s faithful suffered new setbacks at the hands of Muslims, it had suffered them before, at the hands of Amalek and Babylon, Roman persecutors, barbarian invaders, and wily heresiarchs. If Islam challenged accepted Christian orthodoxies by presenting a new blend of Christian and non-Christian beliefs and practices, it merely showed itself to be heresy, along the lines of the innumerable heretical groups that had preceded it. While Islam’s success in conquering and converting most of Christendom challenged the assumptions of a triumphalist tradition of Christian historiography, darker traditions of Antichrist and Apocalypse could explain these troubling events. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 416

Categorization

• XREF: Fits the ‘assimilation of the new into the familiar’ pattern seen throughout the book and in Hale’s chapter on Jewish responses. — connects to: Luther and the Reformers saw the Turk as a sharper Antichrist than the Pope